CHICAGO OBSERVER

Substantial cost overruns on the new Chicago Academy of Sciences building and its planned exhibits preceded Paul Heltne's announced departure last week after a 17-year tenure as president. His resignation came at an odd juncture, considering that the academy's much-touted $33-million nature museum in Lincoln Park is set to open this October.

But therein lies an explanation for Mr. Heltne's exit. Building costs were budgeted at about $24 million, while initial exhibit expenses, according to David H. Voss, chairman of the board of trustees, have climbed to a projected $7 million from $5.5 million.

Messrs. Heltne and Voss both disputed the notion of unacceptable costs. "The increases we've experienced are very nominal," says the 57-year-old Mr. Heltne. "We have a very unique building here. . . . Nobody could tell us what it would cost, and we also have one-of-a-kind exhibits."

Alarmed trustees, however, first moved more than a year ago to install a chief operating officer -- Colin R. Silvester, 55 -- in an attempt to increase financial discipline. "The perception of the trustees is, Paul is a very articulate scientist and wonderful spokesperson," says one academy supporter. "He turned out not to be good in the financial area."

Adds Mr. Voss, a banker: "You really need to know Paul. Paul is just one of these guys who enjoys scientific and education things. He wants to pursue those kinds of things and pursue them with the academy."

New test for theory that HQ goes near home of CEO

Will St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. move its corporate headquarters here? That's what some connected types have been saying, with plausible reason: CEO Robert B. Shapiro lives here, as does the company's new chief financial officer, former Sears, Roebuck and Co. CFO Gary L. Crittenden. Monsanto already has extensive Illinois operations, including G. D. Searle & Co., NutraSweet and DeKalb Genetics Corp. A Chicago-based spokesman for Monsanto says, "It's not happening. Monsanto world headquarters will remain in St. Louis." Stay tuned.

TV exposure for CUB -- not the ball team -- expands beyond 4 a.m.

Those public service announcements for the Citizens Utility Board (CUB) have been popping up with surprising regularity on cable TV, haven't they, Marty Cohen? "We thought it would run a few times at odd hours," confesses CUB's executive director. "They've given it more play than we expected." A likely explanation: CUB's spots mention the lobbying group's opposition to the pending Ameritech Corp. merger with SBC Communications Inc. In CUB's corner: AT&T Corp., which is buying Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), the Denver owner of the cable system on which the spots run. A TCI spokeswoman declined to comment. Says a bemused Ameritech Illinois President Douglas L. Whitley: "People have to connect the dots. It should be no surprise to anyone."

Are you now, or have you ever been, a . . . Chicagoan?

His mother was a Whitney. His father was a J. P. Morgan partner. He socialized with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and worked at the New Republic magazine bankrolled by his parents. Yes, it has been a charmed life for Michael Straight -- except for one episode: his membership in the Communist International during the '30s and lingering allegations that he used his friendship with the Roosevelts to land a sensitive job for espionage purposes. Now 82 and a North Sider (via a recent marriage to a psychotherapist-painter here), Mr. Straight and his Cambridge U. days are examined anew in "The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America -- the Stalin Era."

Authors Allen Weinstein and Aleksandr Vassiliev plumb newly available (but raw) KGB files that, in Mr. Straight's view, "confirm substantially" his 1983 memoir, "After Long Silence," which denied any connection between his White House entree and Soviet spy efforts. "Keynes, who was my teacher, called us all amateur Communists, which we were," Mr. Straight says with an aristocratic air. Busying himself by attempting to restage his play about the Italian realist painter Caravaggio, he allows: "I can't complain. I've always had a very privileged life and a fortunate one. But this was a vein in it which was extremely painful and pretty much destroyed the prospect of a conventional career."

One understandable goof

"Gatsby was a bootlegger; it was Nick Carraway, the narrator, who was in the bond business." -- recent correction in the New York Times regarding the occupation of the lead character in one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels